Doomsday Clock

With all the excitement and hype surrounding last week’s release of Marvel Studios’s Black Panther, it’s easy to forget that, when the movie was announced as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Three three and a half years ago, it looked to be nothing but a flick about another mid-tier character just to keep our juices flowing until Infinity War. While we loved Black Panther when he was pulled out of his element in Wakanda and dropped into a gritty pulp action story, his day-to-day adventures at home never set our world on fire, and we were looking far less forward to this than we were, say, Captain Marvel.

Since then, Marvel installed an A-list director who turned the movie into something much more than the half-decent filler in between Avengers movies we initially expected. We saw the movie this weekend (in a local theater packed in a way we haven’t seen since the first Spider-Man movie), and we discuss, in a spoiler-filled way, how we liked it, what worked for us and what didn’t, the worldbuilding and the depth of the character bench, and some of the political commentary we found to be embedded in the film.

We also discuss January 24th’s Doomsday Clock #3, written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Franks. This is the third issue in the DCU / Watchmen universe crossover, and we go into it in depth in a segment which we’re beginning to refer to, here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, as “Dr. Manhattan Can’t Do That, Dammit!”

This show was recorded live to tape, with minimal editing. So if you’ve been looking for a comics podcast where one of the hosts wants to move to Wakanda so they can find someone competent to program their Nest thermostat, you’ve come to the right place.

After a couple of weeks off due to holidays, family travel, blizzards, arctic vortices, and professional obligations, and we’ve moved past holiday genre movies and into the pre-convention season lull. Meaning that until Marvel Studios’ Black Panther drops in about six weeks, there’s nothing to talk but comics.

And frankly, we’re kinda glad about that. Because as much as we like the comics-related visual entertainment, there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned comic book to make you feel like a kid again. And sometimes, that kid is very, very angry about what has happened to the Watchmen universe.

So we talk about a few of this week’s new books, including:

Batman #38, written by Tom King with art by Travis Moore and Giulia Brusco,

Spider-Man #236, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Oscar Bazaldua, and

Justice League #36, written by Priest with art by Pete Woods!

But no calendar can stop Rob from chiming in on a comic book about the character from Watchmen, so we also discuss the December 27th release, Doomsday Clock #2, written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Frank!

This show was recorded live to tape, with minimal editing. So if you want to find out what the mythical 102nd use for duct tape is (the dirty one), you’ve come to the right show!

Marvel Studios’s latest Netflix series, The Punisher, dropped all at once a couple of weeks ago, and it was, in a lot of ways, very different than the series that have been delivered up until now. Sure, the other series dealt with adult themes – Jessica Jones tackled being a survivor of abuse, Luke Cage dealt with racism, and Iron Fist took on the perils of being a boring rich white guy no one likes – but none of those series featured a protagonist who stabs people in the neck just to watch them die.

So we spend a chunk of the show talking about The Punisher, how it handles themes of PTSD and how war destroys not only soldiers, but also their families… and how those weighty issues map to a story that delivers the cheap thrill of watching Jersey mooks having their legs broken by a man sometimes known as “Shooty Batman.”

But the money of the week is the release of the first issue of Doomsday Clock #1, written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Frank. This is the real beginning of DC Comics not only sequelizing Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, but putting characters from the DC Universe onto a collision course with that universe. While we’ve both been enjoying DC: Rebirth, Rob is a huge fan of the original Watchmen, and thus has been DREADING the release of this book. So we break it down, and come to a couple of surprising conclusions.

This episode was recorded live to tape, with minimal editing, so if you’re looking for a podcast where the hosts are pretty convinced they came up with the moniker, “Shooty Batman,” you’ve come to the right place!

DC has been teasing the inclusion of elements of Watchmen into DC Rebirth for nearly a year and a half now, which has made us, Rob especially, very nervous. That inclusion has been kept down to a dull roar until this past weekend, when DC released an ashcan of the first six pages of Doomsday Clock, the 12-issue mini-series that will make good on their threat – I mean, their promise.

So we read those pages, and, to be honest, we read them cold, without noticing that the date in the first panel was 1992, not 1985. So our reaction is based on the misconception that the events of these pages was taking place three weeks after the end of Alan Moore’s Watchmen… not that knowing seven years have passed really change our opinion much. And what did we think? Listen to find out, and thank God that modern digital recording can modulate Rob’s shrieking!

We also discuss Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to one of Rob’s favorite movies, and a flick that he had no intention of seeing until decent reviews started to come out. But see it we did, and we discuss it from two opposing viewpoints: one rabid about Ridley Scott’s 1982 original, and one who went into the sequel almost cold about the first movie. Once again: digital modulation is your friend.

We also discuss:

Batman: White Knight #1, written and drawn by Sean Murphy, and

Batman #32, the conclusion of The War of Jokes and Riddles arc, written by Tom King with art by Mikel Janin!

This episode was recorded live to tape, meaning that “tossing Joi onto a hard drive” could have any one of many meanings!